Phantom Limb
by ink and ashes
Summary: Because alien and government conspiracies aside, they're just kids.


**DISCLAIMER: **I own nothing but the opinion that Slash is a sexy beast on the guitar.

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**PHANTOM LIMB**

_._

_All my life,_

_Anastasia, Anastasia_

He doesn't hate Liz.

He doesn't hate Tess.

He doesn't hate anyone; the Buddha once said that holding onto anger is like grasping onto a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one that gets burned. It's one of the Buddha's most famous quotes and he likes it. The imagery is clear enough for him to easily digest and the meaning is very straight forward.

But the problem is that he _does_ hate Liz. Just a little. Just enough to chase his eyes away when she looks at him. Just enough to remind him that, while Max Evans had saved his life, it was Liz and her merry band of freaks that took it. He likes Liz, a lot—he'd _loved_ her and, if he's honest, he still does—and she's beautiful, smart, sweet, and one amazing young woman. She's special, anyone could see that, and he'd wanted her more than words could express. When he'd finally gotten her, it hurt like hell when he had to let her go. And now, they're friends, pretty good friends, and if his eyes linger on her as she walks away, or his hugs are tighter than they should be, it's because he's still letting her go.

He's learned the meaning of sacrifice.

And Tess?

No, no. He doesn't want to think about Tess. He doesn't want to ever think about Tess ever again. He doesn't ever want to think about Alex's body in a duffle bag—like fucking _garbage_—and her smiling face thanking him—fucking _thanking _him—for helping her out—he never would have helped her, _never_, and the others have to know that, they can't blame him, Alex was his bro and he would have _never_ just watched as she killed his bro with her mind and _god, please, stop these nightmares, I'm so sorry._

No. No, Kyle doesn't hate anyone.

But if anyone mentions her name around him, he will forsake his prophet long enough to break their teeth.

Just a little. Just enough.

.

_This may be our last goodbye._

_._

Max is many things, but stupid is not—often—one of them.

He sees the way she flinches at his touch, the way she backs off much too quickly when, before, she would have stood her ground. They don't embrace or hold hands anymore, they don't smile into each other's eyes until the rest of the world fades and all that remains is them, helplessly in love.

She doesn't smile at all, these days. Not really.

He hates it. He hates it so much that he wants to scream. So much, that he wants to shake her until her head falls off and reveals that she's really just another one of those skins, another bioengineered suit, and that _his _Liz—his smiling angel that loves him more than he could have ever hoped for—is waiting for him to take her home.

But mostly, he wants to die.

His son is out there, at the mercy of a monster he knows only by name, in the womb of a woman he loathes and loves and loathes that he can't help loving her. A woman that cradled him when his true love—and she _is_ his true love, to hell with destiny and squares—had deceived him into believing she'd deceived him. A woman who was just a girl pretending to be a woman; she walked and talked like a queen, expected supplication like a queen, and fed him power, ego, and worth unlike anything he'd ever imagined. She'd made him feel invincible, capable, larger than life. She'd made him the perfect king to her perfect queen and it sickened him just how _perfect_ they were together.

Why hadn't he seen it? Why hadn't he felt it?

Betrayed by his waitress, he'd turned to his former wife. And because of it, one of their people—he hated that he still thought like a king instead of just _Max_—is gone. Gone and cold and clammy and—no, no, he's not going to think about Alex in that body bag. He's not going to think about the horrible _relief_ he felt after he'd stepped out of that van. Relief that quickly turned to shame, then regret, then pure _agony_ when Liz just stood there, a broken doll that knew she would shatter if she so much as twitched.

Izzy, rebelling against him at every turn with Kyle at her side. Michael, helping Liz on her crusade. Liz… _Liz_.

Betrayed by his love, by his second, by his sister, and by his queen.

He can trust no one.

And then, of course, in spite of everything, he'd been proven wrong. _He_, the king—no, no, he's Max, not Zan, Zan was a bastard with horrible taste in women—had been proven wrong.

But the worst of it is that, deep down, he wants to blame Liz for this. He loves her, wants her, needs her to breathe, and it aches that there's a layer of frost in her kiss, that her eyes have never regained that spark he so admired. He would have loved to have had a child with _her_—when they were ready—and he's trying so hard to pick up where they left off. To pretend that he's not going frantic thinking about his son, that he doesn't feel the accusation in Liz's stare, that their lives aren't screwed up. He's trying to _fix_ it. He just wants to ace his exams and dissect frogs with Liz and be her Romeo because that's what _should have happened_ if she hadn't _pushed him towards Tess_.

Why had she done that? Why had Tess…? Why?

Why, why, _why?_

He loves her and he resents her—_both _of the women, the 'hers' of his heart.

He has no idea when love stopped being about love and became just another way to ease the pain.

.

_You can save me._

_._

She's not used to playing messenger.

She knows that the only reason she's able to breathe is because of Alex. He's gone and he's never coming back—_please, please don't leave me_—but she has this tiny fragment of him with her, following her, dancing with her, helping her live on without him. It's confusing—she's stopped trying to make sense of it—and it's frightening, but it helps.

Even in death, Alex is a sweetheart.

But now, it falls to her to help their friends. Alex is worried, understandably so, and when Isabel stops crying long enough to dry her eyes, she knows what he wants her to do.

Max is the easiest because her brother's always been on the obsessive side of infatuated with Liz Parker. She makes sure to talk to him as much as possible, gives him a peck on the cheek, and smothers him with love and affection. Nothing can distract him from his single-mindedness, but she likes to think she's helping.

Kyle's not doing too well. He's harder to get to; he's always working or playing sports, distracting himself, and his complete conversion to Buddhism makes talking to him a bit of a hassle. He hangs out in the diner whenever he can, though, which gives her the opportunity she needs. So she bakes way more pies than can fit into her parents' oven and gives him one because he looks like he's losing too much weight. The boyish pleasure on his face makes her feel better, accomplished, and she knows that a pie can't erase the shadows under his eyes, but it's a start.

She needs Alex's help with Maria. Sadly—regretfully—she's never bothered to get close to the scattered blonde and she has no idea how to go about forging a connection between them. But divas stick together, right?

Alex gently urges her to keep pushing, keep trying, and at last, Isabel manages to coerce Maria into a shopping expedition. They spend way too much money on things neither of them really want and it's awkward with just the two of them, but when Maria laughs at the face Isabel makes—who would willing wear argyle and plaid _together?_—she hopes that she's sown the seeds for more days like this.

Michael is Michael, and her other brother seems to be on the same wavelength as she is; she watches him handle Maria with more patience than she'd ever thought him capable of, and he's throwing enough distractions Kyle's way to keep them both occupied with guy stuff she really doesn't want to be a part of. He makes Kyle laugh and Maria calm while handling school and two jobs. Isabel is so, so proud of him, cannot believe that this is the same boy that wanted nothing to do with Earth because he'd been so sure he was leaving. He's so much stronger than she'd given him credit for, and Alex is glad for it.

But as strong as Michael is, he's facing the same dilemma she is.

Michael keeps a careful eye on Liz Parker; she knows, because so does she. Liz is the one person Isabel cannot, for the life of her, find common ground with. Max is one thing, but she'd really rather not talk about soul mates and romance, thank you very much. It shames Isabel that the only sentiment she's ever had toward the waitress is 'catalyst'. Alex is understanding, doesn't hold that against her, but he pleads in his quiet way and she can't say no.

So she tries.

But she can't handle Parker's grief.

It's an ugly, bitter taste on her tongue whenever she gets close to her brother's dream girl. She wants to roll her eyes whenever she sees that plastic smile—_please_, no one can act better than she can—and she wants to cringe whenever she sees Max and Liz together; there's an unnatural desperation between them that looks painful.

Liz isn't as easily distracted or placated as Kyle and Maria. Liz doesn't cry like Max does. To Isabel's surprise, Liz is similar to Michael in that she buries her despair, and it hurts to look at her.

She can't reach that kind of person. Not in dreams or in waking life.

She's not that strong.

"Please, Is. She's my girl, too."

"I can't," she whispers, defeated. "I'm sorry. I can't—you can't ask me to… I _can't_."

There are some people that can't be helped and trying to shoulder Parker's burden on top of her own would kill her.

.

_I am fading._

_._

His boss is a little on the weird side—the café should have been the first clue—but Michael doesn't mind Mr. Parker's taste in music. For an older guy, half of it isn't bad. The only problem is that it's all recycled, looping over and over again until it's all white noise and his ears don't even register the fact that there's sound coming from the old stereo.

Tonight's selection surprises him enough to start listening again.

The three of them are closing tonight; Liz, Maria, and himself. They haven't worked, together or otherwise, since the departure that never was, and everything's relatively, disturbingly normal. The girls are in the front, gathering the dishes and babbling away—mostly Maria, Liz hasn't said a word since her father disappeared upstairs. Little Parker is the one that changed the CD, and he fully expects some kind of boy-hating chick rock or, worse, some kind of gushy love song that'll have him running out the door as soon as he finishes with the grill.

But no, little Parker likes to fuck with all of his expectations, and what he hears isn't something Maria can sing to. Too raw, too harsh, too violent for Maria's sweet voice. It's something he's never heard before, but he knows he's going to buy the album with his next paycheck. It's not loud and there's no yelling, just rhythmic anger and lilting sadness riding the waves of words regurgitated from the mouths of the desolate, the damned, the dying. The guitar solos are unbelievable; he stops scraping to bask in the tangled chords that make him think of blood-splattered canvases and burning rubble. It makes the hair on his arms stand on end, it makes him shiver with something primal that revels in the despair, and he can't figure out just when the fuck _Liz Parker_ found something that could unravel him.

Something breaks. Maria yelps.

It takes him a few seconds to realize it's not a part of the murderous rhapsody.

He speeds into the dining area to find Maria standing awkwardly by the Formica counters, watching her best—last—friend lose her goddamn mind.

It's a bloodbath of porcelain and glass. No one that small should be able to hold so much, but she does, and it comes crashing down around them; plates, cups, chairs. All of it, thrown, broken, _shattered_. Entranced, Michael can only stare as she grabs a table and tosses it into the window, unsatisfied when her only reward is the smallest of cracks, and she grabs a stool finish the job. She keeps smashing, relentless, determined to bring this tacky restaurant down. Liz makes a mockery out of her father's diner and fucking demolishes the place, piece by piece, and it's the most horrifying, most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

She's crying by the time he snaps out of his daze to pry the broken stool from her white-knuckled grip. The glass has splintered into a spider web, chipped and torn but not yet broken, and she screams at it, pulling at her hair. The antennae bob and break, falling off of her head and her ponytail comes undone. He says her name once, softly, painfully. She steps right, stops, turns left and paces. Stops. Turns. Stares at the window with those big eyes of hers.

And then she drops like a ton of bricks.

He doesn't know how to approach her, how to handle her, how to calm her down. She's rocking back and forth at his feet, kneeling in the wake of her warpath, surrounded by jagged shards and twisted things.

Maria's voice shakes. "Liz?"

She wails harder, curls tighter, and Michael wants to cry with her.

_Blood is on my hands tonight._


End file.
